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Željko Senečić

Željko Senečić

Art

Biography

Željko Senečić was a Croatian film and television production designer, film director and screenwriter. Senečić studied painting at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts and scenography at the Zagreb Academy of Drama Arts. His career in filmmaking and production design began in the early 1960s. His most memorable films include the Palme d'Or and Academy Award-winning The Tin Drum (Die Blechtrommel, 1979; directed by Volker Schlöndorff and partially filmed in Zagreb, with Senečić credited as production co-designer) and classics of Croatian cinema such as Rondo (1966), One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away (Tko pjeva zlo ne misli, 1970). Senečić won four Golden Arena for Best Production Design awards, making him one of the most decorated production designers in Croatian cinema. He also co-wrote screenplays for films An Event (Događaj, 1969; directed by Vatroslav Mimica) and The House (Kuća, 1975; directed by Bogdan Žižić). Senečić also started directing short films in the late 1970s and then proceeded to make several feature films in the 1990s, such as Delusion (Zavaravanje, 1998) and Dubrovnik Twilight (Dubrovački suton, 1999).

Known For

Private Vices, Public Virtues
5.3

The setting is a Central European kingdom, near the turn of the century. Bored by his very proper wife, the youthful heir to the throne spends his time in amorous dalliances at a sprawling country estate. His wife departs at the arrival of his friends, and they organize a celebration which becomes a wild orgy and culminates in death and tragedy.

Private Vices, Public Virtues

1976
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission
5.2

A renegade team of World War II soldiers. This time, one of the 12 is a woman and, with a Nazi spy within their midst, they're up against German wartime geniuses out to establish a Fourth Reich.

The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission

1988
Short Night of Glass Dolls
6.6

An American journalist in Prague searches for his girlfriend who has suddenly disappeared.

Short Night of Glass Dolls

1971
Devil's Due
N/A

During WW2, a young student of medicine comes to the big city to discover the secret of death, and stays at a motel that turns out to be a brothel. He is asked from Ustasha officer to perform experiments of resurrecting the dead, while the Fascist authorities look for a female communist hiding in the city.

Devil's Due

1979
The Fifth Day of Peace
5.5

Based on a true story. Near the end of World War II, two German deserters are put in an Allied POW camp. When a rigid and militaristic German colonel learns about their desertion, he wants them court-martialed, even if the war is over. The uninterested Allied officers oblige him, and the two men face the firing squad on "the fifth day of peace".

The Fifth Day of Peace

1970
The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission
5.0

Learning of a Nazi plot to attack Washington, D.C. with a deadly nerve gas, Major Wright leads twelve convicts on a suicide mission deep into occupied France to destroy the secret factory where the poison is made.

The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission

1987
The Fed One
6.2

Group of concentration camp prisoners is being constantly tortured by their Kappo. Since they are too weak to stand against him, they pick the strongest among themselves and feed him with parts of their rations.

The Fed One

1970
Eagle in a Cage
6.0

1815. A soldier becomes the governor of St. Helena and jailer of Napoleon

Eagle in a Cage

1972
Inspector Vinko
7.0

Inspector Vinko is a comedy miniseries starring Ivica Vidović, Zoja Odak and Mustafa Nadarević.

Inspector Vinko

1984
One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away
6.4

Set in pre-World War II Zagreb, the story is seen through the eyes of 6-year-old Perica Šafranek (played by Tomislav Žganec). A dandy from Zagreb, Mr Fulir (played by Relja Bašić), starts flirting with Perica's mother during a family picnic. At first, Perica's father doesn't notice anything, but wants to marry off Perica's aunt, so he invites the man to their residence. After multiple rendezvous, Perica's father becomes aware of Fulir's attempts to seduce his wife.

One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away

1970
The House
7.8

The manager of an export-import company meets a young girl who claims that her parents have been taken their house away after WW2. After finding out this to be true, he offers to marry her which she accepts. However, it turns out that the house needs thorough restoration. Since his salary is not enough to cover its massive expenses, he puts his honesty on test.

The House

1975
Project Alien
3.5

In Norway a military plane crashes under mysterious circumstances: in his last message the pilot reported many lights falling from the sky. NATO wants to play down the incident, but the famous TV moderator George Abbot and the no less persistent journalist Milker sense a sensational story about UFOs and start snooping around in the area with help of pilot "Bird" McNamara. Inspired by the suspiciously rigorous isolation of the whole area around the crash point and cases of an unknown disease they have a closer look at the military's activities...

Project Alien

1990
Kozara
6.3

In June of 1942 Germans and their collaborators decide to get rid of partisans and their stronghold in the woods of Mount Kozara in Northern Bosnia. They encircle the mountain and begin the mop up operation. Out gunned and outnumbered the partisans must not only take care of themselves but try to protect thousands of refugees too.

Kozara

1962
An Event
6.7

A grandfather and his grandson go to a fair to sell a horse. A ranger and his vicious partner, Matijevic, follow them as they return home in order to rob them. The confrontation takes place in the forest.

An Event

1969
Suicider
N/A

Drama. Zagreb at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Officer Ivan Meznar returns home from prison, but his wife and friends do not welcome him as he expected. Convinced that there is no other way out, this honorable man decides to commit suicide, but in the idyll of his native Zagorje, he meets the love of his early youth, which again puts him to the test. Vanca Kljakovic wrote the play Suicide based on Luigi Pirandello's novel Sun and Shadow.

Suicider

1985
Ann and Eve
3.4

The story concerns the Yugoslavian holiday of two toothsome Swedish girls. One of the girls, played by Maria Liljedahl, is (metaphorically speaking) a world-champion in the promiscuity sweepstakes, bedding men (and women) in great profusion. Somehow, the movie also manages to be about film reviewers and film directors. Variety) commented '...the film's inherently good visual and physical qualities are themselves dissipated in [the director's] cynicism, ennui, and involuted intellectual mirror tricks.'

Ann and Eve

1970
Charuga
4.9

After returning from the Eastern Front to their small Croatian village as veterans of the First World War, Jovan Stanisavljević (nicknamed Čaruga) and his comrade known only as Mali join forces with the gang led by a local bandit and communist revolutionary Boža The Red. After Boža is brutally murdered by law enforcement officials, Čaruga takes over as the gang's leader, turning them into a bloodthirsty troop that won't take no for an answer.

Charuga

1991
A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrdusa Donja
6.8

A corrupt village commissar insists on mounting a production of Hamlet. The clever local teacher, however, casts the son of a man framed for theft as Hamlet, and the commissar as the usurping king, leading to a climax of truly Shakespearean proportions.

A Performance of Hamlet in the Village of Mrdusa Donja

1974
The Birch Tree
7.6

A beautiful but ailing girl is married to a harsh man who doesn't care for her. Only after she dies does he realize that he actually loves her.

The Birch Tree

1967
The Key
7.8

Segment "Duga ulica" (A Long Street): A young man named Boris and a girl, Vera, live in the same neighborhood. They meet one night when she loses her key. Boris invites her to spend the night at his place; Segment "Čekati" (To Wait): Married students, Ivan and Sonja, live in an old woman's apartment. She is sick and the couple hopes that she will die soon, so that they may inherit her apartment; Segment "Poslije predstave" (After the Play): A husband and a wife lose the key to their apartment and have to spend the night in a hotel. The experience is wonderful and renews their feelings for each other, if only for a night.

The Key

1965